From Publishers Weekly Clarke follows up his acclaimed An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England with a less gripping exploration of truth and fiction, set in Watertown, N.Y., during the Iraq war. Miller, a precocious nine-year-old eighth grader, is convinced that when his parents split up, his father joined the army, was shipped to Iraq, and is now recovering from combat injuries in a VA hospital. The father-son dynamic has roots in, strangely enough, Frederick Exley's cult book, A Fan's Notes, which Miller's father is obsessed with, leading Miller to fantasize that, if he can locate Exley, his father will be cured. Miller's story is augmented by the notes of his therapist, whose professionalism is first compromised by his attraction to Miller's mother and soon by his amazingly unethical (and sometimes morbidly funny) antics--breaking into Miller's house, playing along to a perverse degree with Miller's interest in locating Exley--that eventually obliterate the already tenuous line between reality and imagination. Clarke's a deft satirist, but the narrative's structural intricacies are more confounding than anything, resulting in a work that's fitfully engaging but slow, wonderfully mysterious but increasingly confusing.
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From Booklist In his latest brain-teasing raid on literary history, following the much-acclaimed An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England (2007), Clarke riffs on a cult classic, A Fan’s Notes: A Fictional Memoir (1968), by Frederick Exley. For Tom, a lost soul living in Exley’s hometown, Watertown, New York, this misfit’s ballad of fury and alienation is a sacred text. Tom’s precocious nine-year-old son, Miller, is caught between his floundering father and his lawyer mother, who works at Fort Drum. Then his father abruptly joins the army, goes to Iraq, and ends up in the VA hospital in a coma. Or does he? Miller is beyond unreliable as a narrator, and so is his dangerously crazy shrink, who not only lusts after Miller’s mom, but also encourages his young patient’s impossible search through Watertown’s underworld for Exley, whom Miller believes can save his dad. If only this clever and tender novel didn’t get stuck in a vortex of aberrations. There are hilarious moments; Miller is endearing; and Clarke’s take on the cruel toll of the Iraq War is profound. --Donna Seaman
Mothers and Sons,Iraq War; 2003,Psychological Fiction,Iraq War; 2003-,Iraq War (2003-),Psychotherapists,Humorous,Watertown (N.Y.),Mind and Reality,Fathers and Sons,General,Psychological,Boys,Therapist and Patient,Iraq War; 2003- - Veterans,Children of Disappeared Persons,Military,Fiction,Veterans,History

motw/Exley - Brock Clarke.epub

lgli/!!1\636_Contemporary_fiction\Exley - Brock Clarke.epub

lgrsfic/!!1\636_Contemporary_fiction\Exley - Brock Clarke.epub

zlib/Fiction/American Fiction/Clarke Brock/Exley_1751117.epub

by Brock Clarke

Shannon Ravenel Books

Text

Hachette Book Group, Chapel Hill, N.C., 2011

United States, United States of America

First Edition, PT, 2010

October 5, 2010

Melbourne, 2010

lg_fict_id_529074

Memory of the World Librarian: Quintus

Type: 英文图书

Bookmarks:
1. (p17) PART ONE
2. (p75) PART TWO
3. (p127) PART THREE
4. (p193) PART FOUR
5. (p263) PART FIVE
6. (p297) PART SIX
7. (p317) THE TRUTH
8. (p321) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

<br><h3> Chapter One </h3> <b>Anything Can Be a Beginning As Long As You Call It One</b> <p> <p> My name is Miller Le Ray. I am ten years old. I was nine years old when my dad went to Iraq, and I was still nine years old eight months later when I found out he was back from Iraq and in the VA hospital. The day I went to see him in the VA hospital was the day I started trying to find Exley. Exley was the guy who wrote my dad's favorite book, <i>A Fan's Notes</i>. Mother calls the Exley I eventually found a Man Who Just <i>Said</i> He Was Exley. But I just call him Exley. Because this is one of the things I learned on my own: you need to say things simply, especially when they're complicated. <p> So why don't I begin there: the day I went to see my dad in the VA hospital. Exley's book begins toward the end, but he calls it a beginning anyway. Because this is one of the things I learned from Exley: anything can be a beginning as long as you call it one. <p> <p> <b>A Beginning <p> I</b> woke up on Sunday, the eleventh of November, 200-, knowing that my dad had come home from the war. I knew this without anyone having to tell me; I knew it in my bones, the way you always know the most important things. I jumped out of bed and ran into my parents' room. The bed was unmade and there was no one in it. The room was as empty as the bed. I checked the upstairs bathroom. The faucet was dripping, like always. Before my dad went away, Mother sometimes joked that he was the kind of guy who would join up and go to Iraq just so he wouldn't have to fix the faucet. After he left, she stopped making the joke. But anyway, the bathroom was also empty. I went back to his bedroom, in case my dad had snuck in there while I was in the other rooms looking for him. But it was empty, too. Then I heard a sound coming from downstairs. It was Mother, crying. Mother never cried. The only other time I had ever heard her cry was when my dad went to Iraq in the first place. This was, of course, how I knew my dad was home: I'd heard Mother crying without knowing I'd heard her crying. When we say we know something in our bones, we mean we don't know yet how we know what we know. This is what we mean by "bones." <p> So I ran downstairs and followed the sound of Mother's crying, which led me to the bathroom. The door was closed. I went to knock, then almost didn't. Because it was hard to have an intelligent conversation with Mother when she was in the bathroom. I knew, from experience, that if I knocked on the bathroom door, this is how the conversation would go. <p> "I'm in the bathroom," Mother would say. <p> "What are you doing in there?" I would ask. <p> "<i>Miller</i>, I am <i>in</i> the <i>bathroom</i>," Mother would say. <p> "I <i>know</i>," I would say. "But what are you <i>doing</i> in there?" <p> But this time was different. It was different because Mother had been crying and I wanted to know why, and my dad was back from the war and I wanted to know where he was. I knocked on the door, and Mother stopped crying immediately. <p> "I'm in the bathroom," she said. <p> "Why were you crying?" I asked. And then, before she could answer, I asked, "Where's my dad?" Which started her crying again. <p> I took a step back from the door and thought about what I knew. I absolutely knew my dad was back from Iraq. Except he wasn't in our house, which he would have been if he'd been able to be in our house. Mother was crying, which she'd never done, as far as I knew, except for that once. All of this was going on in Watertown, New York. Fort Drum is in Watertown. It's an army fort. I go to school with dozens of kids whose dads and mothers are based at Fort Drum before and after going to Iraq. I knew from them that when their parents left Iraq for Watertown, they went to one of three places. My dad wasn't in the house - my eyes told me that. My dad wasn't in the base morgue, either - my bones told me that, just as surely as they'd told me my dad was back from Iraq in the first place. That left only one place where he could be: the VA hospital. <p> I went upstairs, got dressed, brushed my teeth, walked back downstairs, got Exley's book from my dad's study, put it in my backpack, shouldered the backpack, then took a few steps toward the bathroom. The door to the bathroom was still closed, and I could hear Mother still crying behind it, quieter now, but steady, like an all-day rain. Please don't cry, I wanted to say to her. <i>I'm going to go get my dad and bring him home and everything will be all right. So please don't cry.</i> But I didn't think I could say anything like that and not feel ridiculous afterward. I thought of my dad, of what he might say to Mother under these kinds of circumstances. Probably something not exactly comforting, probably something beginning with the phrase "For Christ's sake." I didn't think I could, or should, say that, either. So instead of saying either of those two things, I said, "I'm going to ride my bike," although possibly not loud enough to be heard over her crying. In any case, Mother kept crying. And so I walked into the garage, where I kept my Huffy, climbed on, and pedaled to the VA hospital. <p> <i>(Continues...)</i> <p> <p> <!-- copyright notice --> <br></pre> <blockquote><hr noshade size='1'><font size='-2'> Excerpted from <b>Exley</b> by <b>Brock Clarke</b> Copyright © 2010 by Brock Clarke. Excerpted by permission.<br> All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.<br>Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

<p><P>For nine-year-old Miller, who lives with his mother in Watertown, New York, life has become a struggle to make sense of his father&#8217;s disappearance, for which he blames himself. Then, when he becomes convinced that he has found his father lying comatose in the local VA hospital, a victim of the war in Iraq, Miller begins a search for the one person he believes can save him, the famously reclusive &#8212; and, unfortunately, dead &#8212; Frederick Exley, a Watertown native and the author of his father&#8217;s favorite book, the &#8220;fictional memoir&#8221; <i>A Fan&#8217;s Notes</i>. The story of Miller&#8217;s search, told by both Miller himself and his somewhat flaky therapist, ultimately becomes an exploration of the difference between what we believe to be real and what is in fact real, and how challenging it can be to reconcile the two. <P>Part literary satire, part mystery, <i>Exley</i> unleashes the enormous talent of a writer whom critics have compared to Richard Ford and John Irving and whose work has been called &#8220;absurdly hilarious&#8221; (<i>Entertainment Weekly</i>) and &#8220;wildly entertaining&#8221; (<i>Daily Candy</i>).</p><h3>The Washington Post - Wendy Smith</h3><p>Clarke pulls off a nice trick here, playing postmodern games while delivering a cleverly plotted story complete with a surprise twist embedded in Miller's partial understanding of his parents' tension-riddled relationship.</p>

“The literary equivalent of a half-court shot... Extraordinary.”—NPR For young Miller Le Ray, life has become a search. A search for his dad, who may or may not have joined the army and gone to Iraq. A search for a notorious (and, unfortunately, deceased) writer, Frederick Exley, author of the “fictional memoir” A Fan's Notes, who may hold the key to bringing Miller's father back. But most of all, his is a search for truth. As Miller says, “Sometimes you have to tell the truth about some of the stuff you've done so that people will believe you when you tell them the truth about other stuff you haven't done.” In Exley as in his previous bestselling novel, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers'Homes in New England, Brock Clarke takes his reader into a world that is both familiar and disorienting, thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining. Told by Miller and Dr. Pahnee, both unreliable narrators, it becomes an exploration of the difference between what we believe to be real and what is in fact real.

For young Miller Le Ray, life has become a search. A search for his dad, who may or may not have joined the army and gone to Iraq. A search for a notorious (and, unfortunately, deceased) writer, Frederick Exley, author of the “fictional memoir” A Fan’s Notes, who may hold the key to bringing Miller’s father back. But most of all, his is a search for truth. As Miller says, “Sometimes you have to tell the truth about some of the stuff you’ve done so that people will believe you when you tell them the truth about other stuff you haven’t done.” In Exley as in his previous bestselling novel, An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, Brock Clarke takes his reader into a world that is both familiar and disorienting, thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining. Told by Miller and Dr. Pahnee, both unreliable narrators, it becomes an exploration of the difference between what we believe to be real and what is in fact real.

A nine-year-old boy named Miller, who lives in Watertown, NY, struggles to make sense of his father's disappearance, for which he blames himself. Later, when he is convinced that his father is lying in a coma in the local VA hospital, he searches for the one person he thinks can save his father, the famously reclusive--and dead--author, Frederick Exley, Watertown native and author of the "fictional memoir" A Fan's Notes, his father's favorite book. Told in alternating voices of the young boy and the therapist the boy's mother has hired to help him, Exley is ultimately an exploration of the difference between what we believe to be real and what is real and how difficult it is to reconcile the two.

Therapist Dr. Pahnee, hired by young Miller Le Ray's mother, finds his own reality unraveling as he tries to deal with a patient dedicated to telling the truth who is unable to distinguish between fact and fiction, while grappling with his own growing attraction to the boy's mother.

2012-02-03